Upgrading to Windows 10

Stephenx63

Active member
I've had my custom made PC made by PC Specialist for about 5 years now, and want to upgrade some parts, but not sure what would be best. I'm looking to spend about £300. I use my PC for gaming, I do play games but mostly old emulators and some newer titles on Steam which runs fine on it. Mostly use PC for Internet, videos etc. Here are current stats:

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Card name: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model PC Specialist
System Type x64-based PC
Processor AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor, 3500 Mhz, 3 Core(s), 6 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. F2h, 26/05/2014
SMBIOS Version 2.7
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume3
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.24511"
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 16.0 GB
Available Physical Memory 12.2 GB
Total Virtual Memory 31.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 27.8 GB
Page File Space 16.0 GB
Page File D:\pagefile.sys

I have a SSD with 931GB of free memory on it. I would like to move windows over to it (which I thought I had done) as drive C:/ gets low on memory now a days.
Now that Windows 7 support has ended I want to get Windows 10, I know I need to upgrade some bits as when the 1 year free edition came out I installed it and it crashed constantly. All help greatly appreciated.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I've had my custom made PC made by PC Specialist for about 5 years now, and want to upgrade some parts, but not sure what would be best. I'm looking to spend about £300. I use my PC for gaming, I do play games but mostly old emulators and some newer titles on Steam which runs fine on it. Mostly use PC for Internet, videos etc. Here are current stats:

Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Card name: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model PC Specialist
System Type x64-based PC
Processor AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor, 3500 Mhz, 3 Core(s), 6 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. F2h, 26/05/2014
SMBIOS Version 2.7
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume3
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.24511"
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 16.0 GB
Available Physical Memory 12.2 GB
Total Virtual Memory 31.9 GB
Available Virtual Memory 27.8 GB
Page File Space 16.0 GB
Page File D:\pagefile.sys

I have a SSD with 931GB of free memory on it. I would like to move windows over to it (which I thought I had done) as drive C:/ gets low on memory now a days.
Now that Windows 7 support has ended I want to get Windows 10, I know I need to upgrade some bits as when the 1 year free edition came out I installed it and it crashed constantly. All help greatly appreciated.
Can you post your specs from the order page?

There's almost zero reason to upgrade anything tbh, your current hardware will support windows 10.

That being said, the platform is very low and will bottleneck the system.

But yes, you shouldn't have any problem installing windows 10 now.
 

Stephenx63

Active member
I've changed a few things from the original order so specs posted are most recent.

I'd still like to upgrade some parts, current hardware may support Windows 10 but running it is a different matter. Like you said the system will bottleneck so surely to stop this it's better to upgrade some parts.

When the free 1 year trial came out I installed it on the parts I have now and it never worked, crashed 10 times in one day.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I've changed a few things from the original order so specs posted are most recent.

I'd still like to upgrade some parts, current hardware may support Windows 10 but running it is a different matter. Like you said the system will bottleneck so surely to stop this it's better to upgrade some parts.

When the free 1 year trial came out I installed it on the parts I have now and it never worked, crashed 10 times in one day.
But that’s what I’m saying, there’s no reason it would crash other than a bad installation. The hardware supports it fine.

even if you do upgrade the hardware, you can upgrade windows now and transfer the license to the new build and save £100. But I would strongly suggest doing a clean install of windows 10 before consodering upgrading the hardware.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
Agreed with the above. A clean install of Win 10, taking advantage of the free upgrade that is still available, would be the first thing to do.

A clean install mind, and not an in-place upgrade :)

Then assess what, if any, hardware wants replacing or upgrading.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
It's more likely that the Windows 10 installation was fine but the OP either installed a bad driver or has hardware or an application that's not fully supported by Windows 10.

@Stephenx63 try installing Windows 10 again, this time unplug all external devices except one monitor, the mouse and the keyboard. As soon as Windows is installed run Windows Update repeatedly until no more updates are found. If you're asked to reboot then run Windows Update again as soon as it restarts. This should install all your drivers but check in device manager to see - any devices missing drivers may not work with Windows 10.

If your system doesn't crash in that state then plug in your external devices one by one, allow Windows to find and install drivers - if Windows can't find a driver it's likely that device is not supported by Windows 10. Once all your devices are plugged in reinstall your third party apps one at a time, test the system thoroughly each time to be sure it doesn't crash. If it does crash after an app install then uninstall it and reboot, you'll need to find an alternative or an upgrade for that app.
 

Stephenx63

Active member
Agreed with the above. A clean install of Win 10, taking advantage of the free upgrade that is still available, would be the first thing to do.

A clean install mind, and not an in-place upgrade :)

Then assess what, if any, hardware wants replacing or upgrading.
I've found the Windows Media creation tool that allows me to upgrade my PC to Windows 10. When you say clean install what do you mean exactly? I think my current windows 7 is installed on the C:/ drive.
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
I've found the Windows Media creation tool that allows me to upgrade my PC to Windows 10. When you say clean install what do you mean exactly? I think my current windows 7 is installed on the C:/ drive.
Upgrade is where you overwrite the current installation from within windows.

Clean install is where you boot into the media from the bios. This will wipe whatever is on the disk and just install that version of windows 10.

But do make the installation media from the current windows 10 image, otherwise it will still have to do in place upgrades once installed:
Then follow these instructions:
 
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Stephenx63

Active member
Lets say for example I want to get a new build from scratch, nothing fancy just the basics for web surfing, watching videos and gaming (but not advanced titles), how would this build stack up:

Game Max Centauri Mid Tower Gaming Case - Black £28
AMD Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6GHz 4 Core £79
BeQuiet! Pure Rock Slim CPU Cooler £21
Gigabyte A320M-S2H AMD Socket AM4 Motherboard £45
Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 16GB (2x 8GB) 3200MHz £75
CCL Choice 240GB 2.5" SATA III SSD £24
Seagate BarraCuda 1TB SATA III 3.5" Hard Drive £37
TP-Link TL-WN881ND 300Mbps £9
Fractal Design Essence OEM 500W 80+ PSU £30

Total parts £348 - Built with 3 years warranty

Windows 10 - £10 from eBay.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
We can't gives sales advise on non PC Specialist systems for fairly obvious reasons :) You could ask on an open forum like Tom's Hardware

If you're buying a Windows licence for £10 it's about guaranteed to not be legitimately sourced.

And make sure to check out benchmarks of your preferred game before buying anything because integrated graphics will only get you so far.

That's all the same advice as you'd get if you were going to buy another system from PCS I'm sure :)
 

Stephenx63

Active member
oh yeah sorry lol, should of thought of that.
Where would be best place to get Windows 10 from that doesn't cost a fortune?
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
Windows costs a fortune unfortunately - if the price is too good to be true for a legit copy of Windows.. it is too good to be true!

You could always run Linux if whatever you're doing runs on Linux.

The cheapest way for you to get Windows 10 is to not buy a new PC and just upgrade your existing build to Windows 10 without it costing a penny.

£300 for a new PC is not much even ignoring Windows. You'd be best off squeezing every last drop of life you can out of your FX CPU build and saving up a little more to get something that's a more substantive upgrade when the time to upgrade really is upon you.

If you upgrade your old Windows 7 licence to Windows 10 as advised, you may then be able to tie it to your Microsoft account and transfer it to new hardware when the time to buy a new PC comes round.
 
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